[VIDEO] Ultimate damage scaling STILL punishing Stamina users.

Phinix1 · August 2014

For this test I have two basic builds: One soft caps Magicka and overcharges Spell Power by 4%, while the other soft caps Stamina and overcharges Weapon Damage by 14%. I also have a typical "balanced" Stamina build here that has a fairly even split of Magicka/Stamina and Spell Power/Weapon Damage, which represents what most Stamina users have to do in order to avoid destroying the damage of their class skills, which ALL scale off Magicka.

Magicka Build with Restoration Staff:

Magicka: 2398/2383 - Basically soft capped (only 15 over).
Stamina: 1618/2383 - Basically default. The extra 12 from stats is random.
Spell Damage: 128/123 - Overcharged by crafted gear/jewelry. 4% over cap.
Weapon Damage: 125/187 - Baseline from staff.

Soul Harvest IV: 680 base damage.
Veil of Blades IV: 128 damage per tick.

Magicka Build with Destruction Staff:

Magicka: 2398/2383 - Basically soft capped (only 15 over).
Stamina: 1618/2383 - Basically default. The extra 12 from stats is random.
Spell Damage: 128/123 - Overcharged by crafted gear/jewelry. 4% over cap.
Weapon Damage: 125/187 - Baseline from staff.

Soul Harvest IV: 619 base damage.
Veil of Blades IV: 117 damage per tick.

Typical BALANCED Stamina Build with Daggers:

Magicka: 2061/2383 - Balanced with Stamina.
Stamina: 2037/2383 - Balanced with Magicka.
Spell Damage: 120/123 - From crafted jewelry (glyphs) only.
Weapon Damage: 183/187 - From daggers and crafted gear.

Soul Harvest IV: 557 base damage.
Veil of Blades IV: 106 damage per tick.

As you can see here, the typical balanced Stamina build is 12% weaker than the Magicka build with Destruction Staff and 20% weaker than the same Magicka build with a Restoration staff!

OK, but what happens to our Magicka build if we pick up Molten Weapons (+10 Weapon Damage buff) which puts our weapon damage higher than our spell damage? For Magicka users, NO CHANGE. It appears the test they use to determine which stat is higher either goes by a PERCENT of the cap, or is broken. Lucky for Magicka users, as even when their Weapon Damage is higher than their Spell Power, their ultimates still scale off their two strongest stats (Spell Power and Magicka).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfMS13oaD0w

So, lets test it for our Stamina setup, which we KNOW is using Weapon Damage. Molten Weapons puts us over the soft cap for Weapon Damage, so even if going by percents it should make a difference. But, lo and behold, NO CHANGE AT ALL!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTmaF88yoaA

Sad sad Stamina users.

OK, so what if we start making all our class skills (most of our bar) extremely weak in order to pump our Stamina further over the soft cap than Magicka was? Will THAT make a difference? Lets test it out.

What I did here, is respec (thank you 4k+ gold for science!) my stats out of Health and Magicka to max out Stamina. I made it so that it is just a little over soft cap just like Magicka in the first test (actually a little MORE over the cap than Magicka was). I also used Power Extraction on my 2nd bar on 3 mobs before swapping back to my empty dagger bar, to massively overcharge my Weapon Damage. Lets look at those numbers:

Tweaked Stamina Build with higher stats than Magicka build:

Magicka: 2072/2383 - From gear and passives.
Stamina: 2405/2383 - Basically soft capped (22 over, more than Magicka was).
Spell Damage: 120/123 - From crafted jewelry (glyphs) only.
Weapon Damage: 213/187 - From daggers, crafted gear, and Power Extraction. 
(14% over cap. Almost 4x more over the cap than Spell Power was.)

Soul Harvest IV: 591 base damage.
Veil of Blades IV: 115 damage per tick.

Since our Stamina is overcharged more than our Magicka was for our magic test, and our Weapon Damage is WAY more overcharged than our Spell Power was, you would expect some really nice numbers on our ultimates, right? WRONG!

Still over 2-5% weaker than our Destruction Staff Magicka build with far weaker stats, and 12-15% weaker than with a Restoration Staff on that same lower stat Magicka build!

Additionally, that is after completely ruining the damage of the 60% or more of our bar that are class skills just to cap Stamina, leaving us doing far less damage overall just for ultimates that are STILL weaker!

What the hell, ZOS?

Mumyo · August 2014

I gave up on balance. All i do now is feeling like a full bearded man when i wipe the bu tt of the magickausers.
It seems to be a sickness that in every MMO caster have a big advantage. I totally surrender now because theres so many mmos out there that have the same lvl of retardism and nobody gets it right.

R0M2K · August 2014

Interesting & frustating

Maulkin · August 2014

While the 2%-5% between daggers and destro is not insignificant, it's not really a huge difference either. Sure it needs some small tweaking to bring it on par but the problem for me is not the destro but the resto staff.The Cycle of Life passive makes absolutely no sense. The resto should not be the best DPS weapon as it currently is for DKs and NBs. Resto staff is for healers and healers need survivability not DPS.

In my opinion a good change would be to change the passive and make it that healers get some HP as kickback when they heal other players. Something like 5%/10% of heals given would be good and of course it should apply to the highest heal target only not the total AoE heal pumped. So if you're stacking Grand Healing and pumping 450hp per sec you'd get a maximum of 45hp per sec added to your regen.

If they made this change and also tweaked the ultie coefficients slightly, then there wouldn't be such a distinct advantage to using staffs.

tomiffseb17_ESO · August 2014

I see you did quite a research,, ill add my experience aswell.
I was full magicka build and my ult was bat swarm. The tooltip said it should hit around 230 dmg. That was kinda accurate. However as a fresh vr12 it was time to experience other builds. I dont know why but i still think (i guess i did read it somewhere) ult scales with weapon dmg / spell dmg, whichever is higher. Managed to softcap weapon dmg, and the tooltip said ill hit around 400 per tick. I was like wooho but in reality it was not even 200.. but i had peobably as much stamina as magicka before. Okay reverted back to magicka. I am a NB and i use the aoe buff that increses weapon dmg. I always had that higher then spell dmg. But after gaining a few points plus dmg did not increased. Also one more thing. If it ever gets scaled or it is with stamina/magicka you still suffer dps loss because as far as i know it will check for spell crit no matter if its checks your stamina. Sry for my bad grammar i typed from phone.

p_tsakirisb16_ESO · August 2014

@AlienDiplomat

Your assumptions are pretty flawed. Your "stamina" build is just a "weaker" magicka build. Nothing to do with a proper Stamina build.

You compare spells, against each other with more or less Magicka.
Not weapon attacks from the weapon lines.

All CLASS abilities are based on Magicka & Spell power.
Some are based on weapon critical (example NB Assassination, Templar Aedric Spear) others on Spell Critical (eg NB Shadow, Templar Dawn Wrath)

Stamina build equals using stamina to do your attacks.

So to compare Magicka vs Stamina build, you need to compare eg Low Slash, Rapid Strikes, Wrecking Blow with the other abilities from your Class lines. eg Assasin's Blade, Teleport Strike/Ambush etc.

Then we could be able to discuss about Magicka vs Stamina builds.

jrgray93 · August 2014

I have just about no hope of this game becoming remotely balanced. There are just so many fundamentally flawed systems in place, as well as misleading and incomplete info on abilities. On top of that, we're lucky to get one minor balance change every two weeks.

Phinix1 · August 2014

p_tsakirisb16_ESO wrote: »

@AlienDiplomat

Your assumptions are pretty flawed. Your "stamina" build is just a "weaker" magicka build. Nothing to do with a proper Stamina build.

Scroll down a little. You will see I have an overcharged "pure stamina" build profiled as well. Even with Stamina overcharged more than Magicka was in the Magicka build, and Weapon Power overcharged by a higher percentage than Spell Power was in the Magicka build, ULTIMATES (which is what this thread was about) are STILL weaker with the Stamina setup.

This was about the recent change where ZOS made ultimates scale off whichever was your higher stat/build archetype, and how the Stamina archetype is STILL scaling less than equal Magicka.

p_tsakirisb16_ESO wrote: »

All CLASS abilities are based on Magicka & Spell power.
Some are based on weapon critical (example NB Assassination, Templar Aedric Spear) others on Spell Critical (eg NB Shadow, Templar Dawn Wrath)

Stamina build equals using stamina to do your attacks.

That is exactly my second point. Staff scales all its abilities off Magicka as well, just like class abilities. So magic users can focus on maxing out ONE resource pool for ALL their damage.

Stamina users must SPLIT their investment between Magicka and Stamina, so their class skills are made stronger by Magicka, and their weapon skills by Stamina, and because of this, BOTH end up lower.

You seem to think there are any builds out there where every ability on your bar is stamina-based. While TECHNICALLY possible,DPS will be even lower doing this than using some class skills, as has been shown in several theory-crafting sites like Tamriel Foundry, since many weapon abilities are purely defensive or buff related.

But the central point of this thread, is that even pure overcharged Stamina/Weapon Power is STILL resulting in lower damaging ultimates than LESS overcharged Magicka/Spell Power, even after ZOS "balanced" this in a recent patch.

That is what the numbers clearly show.

p_tsakirisb16_ESO · August 2014

AlienDiplomat wrote: »

But the central point of this thread, is that even pure overcharged Stamina/Weapon Power is STILL resulting in lower damaging ultimates than LESS overcharged Magicka/Spell Power, even after ZOS "balanced" this in a recent patch.

That is what the numbers clearly show.

That is correct, because Ultimates like all the other Class abilities are based on Magicka and Spell power. Not Stamina and Weapon power.

The only Ultimate that is based on Stamina and Weapon power is the Flawless Dawnbreaker from the Fighter Guild line.

david.haypreub18_ESO · August 2014

p_tsakirisb16_ESO wrote: »

That is correct, because Ultimates like all the other Class abilities are based on Magicka and Spell power. Not Stamina and Weapon power.

The only Ultimate that is based on Stamina and Weapon power is the Flawless Dawnbreaker from the Fighter Guild line.

You must have missed the patch notes that said that ultimates will now scale of magicka or stamina, whichever is higher?

Phinix1 · August 2014

david.haypreub18_ESO wrote: »

You must have missed the patch notes that said that ultimates will now scale of magicka or stamina, whichever is higher?

This thread was talking about that as well...

However I decided to contact ZOS, to get it directly from them what exactly this recent change to ultimates was intended to do. Here is the response:

Greetings,

Thank you for all your inquiries into the recent changes to certain in-game ultimate's. To clarify, all ultimate's will have the same base multiplier as they did originally ( I.E. Soul Harvest will still be Magicka based). However in addition to the magicka or stamina base, weapon and spell damage will be factored in. Going with Soul Harvest as an example, its based damage will be determined by your magicka and your weapon damage. Regardless of what your highest stat is every ability still has a determined set of multipliers.

The changes to Ultimate simply fixed the actual damage output as certain abilities were doing insanely higher amounts of damage then actually intended when we changed ultimate's. For example some players were able to do 8k damage in PVP

I hope that this clarifies the changes to ultimate's some, and if you have any other questions,comments or concerns please let me know!

So, it sounds to me like this was NOT intended to be a buff to Stamina builds as it was allowed to sound in the sparse references here, probably to allay the concerns of the community as Stamina continues to languish in imbalance and neglect, barred from trials and limiting the entire range of options for serious end-game content to essentially Staff and Light Armor.

Personally, I have given up on balance as well. In my mind, Stamina is intended to be viable and entertaining for solo play and PVP, and I accept that.

I am now working on a magic build for my Nightblade, and have been able to make the most of it and even have fun in the process.

david.haypreub18_ESO · August 2014

Wow... that is eye-opening. Thanks for the information.

It is depressing to note that ZOS was doing even less to help stamina builds than I thought.

c0rp · August 2014

p_tsakirisb16_ESO wrote: »

AlienDiplomat wrote: »

But the central point of this thread, is that even pure overcharged Stamina/Weapon Power is STILL resulting in lower damaging ultimates than LESS overcharged Magicka/Spell Power, even after ZOS "balanced" this in a recent patch.

That is what the numbers clearly show.

That is correct, because Ultimates like all the other Class abilities are based on Magicka and Spell power. Not Stamina and Weapon power.

The only Ultimate that is based on Stamina and Weapon power is the Flawless Dawnbreaker from the Fighter Guild line.

Your information is outdated. Ultis now scale off magicka or stam w/e is higher.

SongOfMyPeople · August 2014

Just goes to show you that you can't really trust was ZOS is saying when they attempt to "balance" something. Thanks for all the hard work OP!

khele23eb17_ESO · August 2014

AlienDiplomat wrote: »

david.haypreub18_ESO wrote: »

You must have missed the patch notes that said that ultimates will now scale of magicka or stamina, whichever is higher?

This thread was talking about that as well...

However I decided to contact ZOS, to get it directly from them what exactly this recent change to ultimates was intended to do. Here is the response (...)

3103195-peering+sam+what+is+this+i+don't+even.jpg

ExiledKhallisi · August 2014

Pure Stamina Build: only lvl 43 consistantly deals 500-700 DPS

SongOfMyPeople · August 2014

ExiledKhallisi wrote: »

Pure Stamina Build: only lvl 43 consistantly deals 500-700 DPS

Just curious, what does this prove exactly?

ExiledKhallisi · August 2014

SongOfMyPeople wrote: »

Just curious, what does this prove exactly?

That stamina builds don't suck.... And are completely underrated.

p_tsakirisb16_ESO · August 2014

c0rp wrote: »

Your information is outdated. Ultis now scale off magicka or stam w/e is higher.

Apparently not. And if you see the post above yours, ZoS stating that is not the case and many Ultimates are Magicka based. eg Soul Harvest

@AlienDiplomat‌
Thank you for clarifying it with ZoS, yes had missed the update however as you see, ZoS wasn't that clear either. Some abilities are still scaling with Magicka even if that is lower than Stamina.

And I must admit ZoS should provide a full list of what affects all abilities. The whole thing is such a mess that makes no sense

We do not know until we experiment, which abilities are scaling with the highest stat, which changed from weapon to spell power, which are Stamina based other than the Fighter Guild and non staff weapon ones.

Maulkin · August 2014

ZOS have tried to hide away the maths behind the game in order to appeal to the more casual player. It's the same reason why they lack any decent built-in HUDs, I mean without add-ons you can't even seen your HP in number on screen, just a bar. They tried to de-clutter the game.

While that works fine for RP and immersion in levels 1-50, it just becomes a frustrating mess when it comes to end-game content and min/max'ing. And let's face it, an MMO stays alive thanks to end-game players not the 1-50 casuals.

I think what they should do, is they should have an option in Game Settings, that if you have it ticked and you're a veteran then you can get "Advanced Tooltips". These advanced tooltips could tell you whether the ability is
* ranged or melee,
* scaling off stamina/magicka
* scaling off weapon power/spell,
* critting with Spell or Weapon Crit, or not at all
...then do the same for the DoTs or syphons the ability has, if any.

That way we won't need to spend hours arguing and testing things over and over to retrieve information that could very easily be shared by the devs.

In other words, ZOS stop treating your end-game players like children who like things dumbed down and simple cause they can't handle complexity. You'll be rewarded with a far more loyal community that will give your more meaningful feedback.